Metal Fatigue

2025 and this game has mechanics in it I've never seen in any other game. Pre-building your initial base for the mission for example. This gives you more control over the kind of strategy you will be using each map. Not to mention that every mission has combat occuring on 3 different maps simultaneously with certain units and weapons able to traverse each one. Coming up with combinations of combots is just fun. Highly recommend this game to anyone that enjoys RTS, this one is now among my favorites.

I remember playing the demo when it was included in a CD bundled with an issue of PC GAMER in 2001 (I think), then took me a few years to play the full game because I could never find a physical copy down here. It´s a shame a bigger studio didn't make this way back when. The concept is interesting and the three tier maps were an interesting addition to the RTS genre. Bipedal anime looking Mechas on top of it made this game unique, plus the concept of stealing tech from your opponents made an over all cool way of implementing it. If only a bigger studio had been involved and had made a much more polished product it could've potentially spawned a franchise in its own right, in my opinion. I recommend it.

Outstandingly fun RTS from the year 2000 that works well thanks to Nightdive Studios' work. Besides the very inventive and fun gameplay, I absolutely love the story, and I'll be focusing on that (in a non-spoiler way). The [b]story[/b] is utterly amazing. Besides Homeworld 1, this is the best-conceived story I've seen in an RTS. It's a coming-of-age story in a brutal war. It starts off, in the intro, as very puerile - as is appropriate for the 3 young, dumb hotshots who are the protagonists; but, if you follow the campaign, you'll see the story mature alongside the protagonists. The ending is a stroke of genius. I absolutely love it. I won't say anything specific, except that it reminds me of some of Larry Niven's stories. The [b]gameplay[/b] is very fun and inventive. Giant mechs fighting each other, supported by a full array of base buildings and vehicles - which are weaker, but still impactful. The maps have 3 layers - surface, where you can have buildings, mechs, vehicles and aircraft; underground, where only buildings and vehicles go, but mechs are too tall to fit; and orbit, where the build area is very limited, and aircraft reign. Resource generation also varies - underground has plentiful magma lakes you can harvest, the surface has smaller lava pools, but solar panels work, while the orbit has very strong solar power generation. The mechs are divided into torso, legs, right arm, left arm, and crew. The parts have some pretty wild abilities - from rockets and laser swords to large area cloaking devices and jetpacks. The three factions are very different, both in accessible parts and armour types. Capturing and researching enemy parts is a big part of the game; you can do wild things like shear a high-tech arm from an enemy with your laser sword, drop your own arm, grab and affix the sheared arm, and run back to base to research and mass-produce it. There are also superweapons, like the neutron bomb, which kills the crews of heavily-damaged mechs. So, you can have the crew of your own mech get out and capture an enemy mech whole-sale. In short, the gameplay is outrageously inventive, reactive, and fun. The controls are a bit aged in 2025, but not infuriatingly bad. I guess my biggest frustration is that the orbital building grid doesn't quite match the visual layout, leading to slight pixel-hunting. There are some [b]technical issues[/b]. While the game works fine out of the box, the movies don't play (I'm playing on Linux, Proton default settings). If you stumble on this issue, you can try to install the old Indeo codecs - or, simpler, manually play the .avi videos, VLC works. They're in the TBD directory: Opening and Finale are self-explanatory: the first and last videos in the story; after each campaign, in order, you have the XClosing, YClosing and ZClosing.avi vids. So: Opening, X, Y, Z, Finale. For making sure the game preserves resolution after Alt-Tabbing, I changed the following nGlide settings: [list] [*] Video backend: Vulkan worked for me, but choose whatever works [*] Screen resolution: actual monitor resolution, like 1920x1080 [*] Aspect ratio: Preserve Original (so you don't get a stretched screen) [/list] So, [b]in conclusion[/b], it works pretty well despite some slight technical issues, the gameplay is a bit awkward but more than makes up for it in sheer creativity and fun, and I am in love with the story, especially how it progresses and ends.

This one scratches a few different itches for me. Modular Mecha Stealing Parts of enemy Mechs Decimating enemy Crews that try to escape. Only issue is in the campaign which is how your "Hero" Units are always meant to kinda carry you, but if they die, you lose the mission. This results in them being backline Home Defense since you're more easily able to repair them there and keep them going, sending out 'Newby' Pilots who you don't mind losing as you'll likely to do what I did and dump all your points into your Heroes.

[h1][b][i] Nostalgia is a Hell of a Drug [/i][/b][/h1] [h3] TLDR; [/h3] Metal Fatigue is a unique RTS involving 3 factions battling it out in 3 spaces, namely: Air, Land and [strike] Sea [/strike] Underground! You build Combots part by part, Slap on a Crew in that bad boy and let it loose! Build up your base, land and air vehicles, then send in your army to combat your foes from the other factions! Every faction has their unique perks and features as well! [Neuropa being my personal favourite] That being said.. allow me to list out some Cons of the now Digital copy which I had the physical CD for and used it to play a whole lot on my old CRT monitor back in the good ol' days: 1) Obviously, it was not programmed to run on the latest Operating Systems nor any monitors 1080p and above. So there will be a whole bunch of compatibility issues, alongside graphical issues and a lot of troubleshooting to find what graphic settings work best for your monitor resolution with the least amount of pixels. 2) Unit pathing is downright abysmal. 3) In-game UI is not adjustable, meaning your build list, icons and unit information at the bottom left are all fixed sizes. As for the pros.. Well.. It's insanely fun once you've troubleshooted the graphical options and hop right in! So what are you waiting for? Get your ass in there and build up that army, soldier!

Its a classic, very basic by todays standards. but if you like giant Mechas than you should enjoy this.

op

Metal Fatigue looks and seems really cool, with the customizable mechs. But it is a bit of a chore to play. I did spend 60 hours finishing the campaigns, and enjoyed it somewhat. I have nostalgia for the game when I was a kid, so that's still worth something. But overall I don't think the game respects time. Units move slow, pathing is pretty bad, and it gets obnoxious quickly.

One of the cutest RTS games ive played, it knew what it wanted to do and its tried its best to make a big robot game. Rare instance of a Nightdive L however, them not using the right soundtrack for the right faction and all. The new configuration menu in the files is a blessing too.

Metal Fatigue is one of those forgotten early RTS games that besides having interesting mechanics revolved around the mechs, the rest is just a severly lacking. Not to mention multiple parts of the game is still broken. Using the tool to change the resolution does nothing, the cutscenes dont play and the music does not play for the correct faction are just some of the issues i experienced when playing the game. Visually it of course looks dated, the most details are given to the mechs and it does a great job at giving each piece of the mech unique details depending on the type of arm, legs or torso and what faction it is. But the rest is just "mundane" looking or immensly generic. The UI is atrocious, and it lacks so many information and details you know from other RTS games, so a lot of times you just don't know what a unit does or what it's good against or what certain buildings do.The actual stats and information you are given, is so tiny and located at the bottom it becomes a pain to figure out what it says a lot of the time. Gameplay is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slog, outside of the mechs, everything else absolutely sucks. vehicles do barely any damage to buildings or mechs and they die so quickly. Since it is one of those early RTS games, the balance is out the window and you'll be constantly swarmed by enemies and trying to attack their bases becomes an absolute war of attrition.single campaign missions can take over an hour and not because the missions was greatly structured or because there was a back and forth with the enemy.But because nothing does any significant damage to buildings and it takes ages to get anywhere. AI is severly lacking at times will just stand still when an enemy is attacking them. Pathfinding is awful, and you will constantly experience units getting stuck on other units or buildings. Only fun part in the game is when the mechs fight, but the entire game around it, makes it less enjoyable. There is a gimmick in the game where you have 3 different maps in any given level, surface, underground and air. The surface is the traditional rts as you know, and there is not really anything more to it. The air has you build on asteriods scattered around the map, and only the builders can move around the place, the rest is only for planes, which there are 2 of, bombers and fighter planes. Your units can be transported to an asteriod using a teleporter, but can't traverse between asteriods, the air map becomes uinteresting quickly. Underground is the worst of the 3. But the premise or idea is interesting, to get underground you need to have a driller vehicle, that can build an elevator, thus gaining access to the underground, it can then drill the walls underground, to expand the area you can move around in, which is quite interesting. However for both maps outside of the surface, you can't use mechs, so you rely on the vehicle and planes, as mentioned, everything outside mechs sucks in combat and the slog that you already had becomes 10 times as tedious now. I could not care less about the story, it had an interesting setup, but the only tidbits of story you get, is narration before and after missions. Sounds are whatever, they sound outdated, but passable for a game from that time period. Music is okay, but generic and apparently still does not play the correct faction music. It feels like the idea of the mechs was added first to the game and then everything else was then lazily added later. Play Supreme commander instead or hell, even Iron Harvest is better than this.